Why does SQLite (in production) have such a bad rep?

🔗 Why does SQLite (in production) have such a bad rep?
avi.im

Why?

• Most people see it from a web workload perspective. Typically, we use Client-Server databases like PostgreSQL. But, SQLite absolutely shines in many other cases like mobile or embedded devices.

• For a long time, SQLite did not allow concurrent writes along with readers. This was changed in the WAL mode, where you could have a writer with multiple readers.

• You still cannot have multiple concurrent writers. That immediately puts off people. Your workload might or might not need this.

• SQLite did not have a good backup and replication story. This was a major issue, but Ben Johnson changed the entire scene with Litestream. I would say this was one of the most impactful contributions to SQLite ecosystem.

• Some ORMs / libraries come with terrible defaults. For example, not setting PRAGMA busy_timeout.

• Funny little story: I started learning programming with Django, and the docs straight up said SQLite isn't suitable for production. I had a wrong impression for a long time. Then I started using it for my own use cases and realized the trade-offs.

SQLite, like any other database, has its pros and cons. For the majority of applications and scales, it is perfect. You always have PostgreSQL for anything else.

TLDR: SQLite slaps. You will be fine.

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